Zearalenone (ZON) is a mycotoxin produced by the Fusarium fungus. ZON can be found in a wide variety of plants and soils, and can have negative health effects on animal husbandry and humans. Accelerated Solvent Extraction (ASE) is a proven extraction technology that not only helps to eliminate these bottlenecks by decreasing the extraction time, but requires far less technician attendance because it is an automated system.

Mycotoxins are a diverse group of highly toxic secondary metabolic products from various fungal species. Their analysis can be challenging because the physicochemical properties of these compounds vary widely. LCMS has been widely used, however, this technique is not suitable for simultaneous screening of large numbers of mycotoxins. Instead, ultrahigh-performance LC coupled with hybrid quadrupole-Orbitrap MS can provide both detailed structural information and effective screening of multiple mycotoxins.

Mycotoxins are the toxic secondary metabolites produced by many species of microscopic filamentary fungi occurring on field cereals, including barley. There is a trend toward the simplification of sample preparation procedures as much as possible. Full spectral data acquisition techniques are also preferred because of their ease of usage, along with the possibility of retrospective archived data mining. We introduce a multi-mycotoxin method for analysis of 32 mycotoxins in beer based on very simple sample preparation and UHPLC coupled with full spectral Orbitrap MS detection.

The analysis of food toxicants is challenging because of the high number of substances that need to be analyzed. Pesticides alone account for over 800 analytes including other types of toxicants such as mycotoxins, plant toxins and/or veterinary drugs. The use of liquid chromatography with full-scan, high-resolution accurate mass spectrometry (HRAM) as an alternative is gaining in popularity. We compare two different scan options of a quadrupole-Orbitrap system, both offering full mass range fragmentation techniques, and to optimize performance in terms of sensitivity and selectivity

Mycotoxins are potentially toxic secondary metabolites produced by different species of fungi. The main relevant species occurring on cereals are Penicillium sp., Fusarium sp. and Aspergillus sp. The fungal contamination can either occur on the field or during storage. For cereals and baby food, the European Union (EU) legislation currently sets maximum levels (ML) for key mycotoxins. We describe a simple and fast multi-mycotoxin method that covers the legislated mycotoxins as well as 5 metabolites.